Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor, as I have just about every week since the health care law has been passed, with a doctor's second opinion about the health care law. I have great concerns about the law that was forced through this Senate.

I come to the floor because it seems that the more Americans find out and learn about this health care law, the less they like it. A majority of Americans now in national polls say they want out. They absolutely want out.

Since October of 2010, the administration has granted waivers--waivers--to unions, businesses, insurers, and actually to whole States because they cannot afford the health care law's burdensome mandates.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services continues to release more waivers and did so again last Friday. They have now granted a total of 1,471 annual benefit limit waivers, and this has covered 3.2 million Americans.

That is why I come to the floor to introduce a bill that will allow every American--every American--to apply for a waiver from the President's health care law.

Under my bill, any American can submit a waiver application seeking relief from any or all of the health care law's mandates. All those Americans will have to do is simply show what unions and corporations have shown in order to get their waivers--nothing more, nothing less.

Waivers will be granted to individuals who show that the health care law is either increasing their insurance premiums or decreasing their access to benefits. That is all they have to show.

So far, this administration has ignored most Americans demand for a way out of the health care law, and Americans are looking for a way out of it. Instead, this administration has granted half the waivers--half the waivers--to people who get their health coverage through unions. Although those people represent a very small percentage of the workers in America, they got half of all the waivers. It is neither fair nor is it reasonable.

These are the same unions--the same unions--that lobbied for and supported the health care law. But now that they have actually read it and found out what is in it, even though it has been passed--too late now; we thought too late--but they have been getting waivers so they do not have to live under the mandates of the health care law.

We are talking about unions such as the Service Employees International Union. This is what they said about the health care law. These are people who lobbied for the health care law. Now they have found out what is in it, and they say to live under it would be financially impossible. A union that lobbied for the health care law now says it would be financially impossible to live under it.

It does not just apply to that union; it applies to Americans all across this great land. So I do not think any Americans should have to bear financially impossible costs because of the law.

The financially impossible mandates and elements of this bill have absolutely become more obvious to more Americans as they have taken the time to look at the rules and the regulations. That is why, frankly, this steady drip of waivers coming out of Health and Human Services--giving waivers to many of their friends--has become such an embarrassment for this administration and why they actually recently abruptly changed the rules.

In June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that all employees and organizations that cannot afford the law's crushing mandates--and there are many--must jump through a new set of hoops. It used to be that they would get a 1-year waiver. Now all employers and organizations, even those that have already gotten a waiver, must apply for long-term waivers by September of this year. The long-term waivers will last all the way until 2014.

Instead of ending the waiver process, the administration should extend the waiver process to include all Americans. That is what my bill does. If not, families, companies, and organizations of all sizes will soon be hit with these crushing mandates.

Under the administration's current plan, employers will be forced to provide $750,000 worth of coverage to every employee this year. By next September, that number balloons to $2 million. Beyond that, there is no limit--it continues to go higher and higher. So if you are an employer and you cannot afford $2 million in coverage next year, well, you better apply for your waiver now, that long-term waiver, before September of this year; otherwise, you are going to be stuck with costs that only get higher and higher. This, to me, is what the administration wants to do because they do not want to put out waivers in 2012, an election year, which is going to cause additional attention to how unpopular this health care law continues to be.

Let's talk about some Americans who get together--people in any community, in my State, in your State, Mr. President--and want to start a new business. They are thinking about starting a new business after September, thinking about, Do we do it this summer? Do we wait until the fall? If these people want to start a new business and hire people and they want to start that business after September, they are going to be faced with two difficult choices: They can offer high-cost, government-approved health insurance--that is what the health care law says--making it very expensive for them to try to open a new business, to try to hire workers, to put America back to work--we are at a time when there is 9.2 percent unemployment in this country--or these people trying to start a new business can refuse to offer coverage at all because they can't afford the health care law's sky-high mandates.

So the incentives in the health care law will encourage businesses to do what? Well, to drop insurance coverage if they are providing it right now. Under the law, businesses are permitted to drop out of paying for employer-provided coverage as long as they pay a fine. The fine is going to be $2,000 per employee. The fine is far smaller than the exploding costs imposed by the health care law. So I think this explains why McKinsey & Company recently reported that up to 50 percent of employers are expected to stop offering employer-provided health care coverage.

The employees who are dumped--what happens to them? Well, they will be forced to get their insurance through a government exchange, an exchange run by Washington, which is heavily subsidized by the American taxpayers. They are going to be dumped into the exchange. The annual cost of subsidizing these ballooning numbers of insurance policies, by my calculation, is about $900 billion. Well, that is nine times higher than what the White House has claimed. In short, the taxpayers of this country will be stuck with a bill of nearly $1 trillion every year.

Well, I am going to continue to come to the floor week after week, continue to fight to repeal and replace this health care law with patient-centered care--patient-centered care--that lowers costs for all Americans and improves their care. So I will continue with the second opinions because until we are able to repeal and replace the health care law, I am going to move forward with what is now the Waive Act. This bill offers all Americans the freedom to choose--the freedom that has been taken away from them by the President's health care law. It gives them the right to seek and be granted a waiver out of the President's health care law. It is time to transfer power from Washington back to the American people. This will ensure they can get the care they need from the doctor they want at a price they can afford.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source